yikes

Frederick Chase had been there in the literal sense. He had occupied rooms and driven cars and sat at tables; he had tucked books onto shelves and filled notebooks with equations and diagrams. But there had always been a distance to him that Annabeth had felt long before she possessed the vocabulary to describe it.

A man could stand three feet away and still feel impossibly far; she had learned that young.

Her mother meant absence too. Maybe more than anyone.

Athena existed in stories and signs and expectations. She existed in the impossible standards Annabeth carried on her shoulders and in the intelligence that seemed to separate her from other children before she understood why. She existed in victories, in lessons.. in pressure, in architecture and in strategy — she existed bound to Time like only gods could be.

But not in bedtime stories or visits throughout one’s life. Athena was present in everything and absent from everything at the same time.

Her mother meant absence, for even her birth had only been a passing thought.

New York had meant absence, as well. Not because the city lacked people, obviously — oddly enough, the opposite was what made it truer. Millions of people existed within it, of voices and lives, and yet loneliness had found her anyway.

Loneliness was clever like that; It didn't require empty rooms, but only the feeling of standing inside a crowd and believing nobody would notice if one disappeared.

Camp Half-Blood had meant absence too, and that realization came later. It didn’t happen when she first arrived, when she was seven and frightened and exhausted and clutching what remained of her childhood in bruised hands; back then, camp had felt permanent. It had felt safe, and it had been home.

It took years to understand that even homes could be temporary. Summer always ended, cabins emptied and friends left. Some came back, sure, but others didn't. Demigods disappeared, and demigods died.

The campfire burned every night, and every year there seemed to be another face missing from the circle. Another name spoken softly, and another story ending too soon — people left, because that was what people did.

Thalia, too, had become absence. Even if not by choice — though that would eventually come true, also —, for years she had been a pine tree on a hill, a memory frozen in sacrifice and a promise Annabeth carried so tightly that it hurt.

Then she returned, and then she left again. Not cruelly, but Hunters belonged to the road and the moon and eternity.

Annabeth had found her only to lose her in a different way.

There was Luke, too. And Luke was absence carved into bone. The oldest wound, the one that never healed correctly even now. It had been some (short) time, and wars had ended and were starting to begin again. The world had survived, and he had not, but there were still moments when she thought she saw him. Moments of insanity where she saw a flash of dark hair in a crowd, a familiar laugh carried on the wind or a shape standing where nobody stood.

Then reality returned, and reality always remembered what grief refused to learn.

Luke was absence forever. And forever was a difficult word; Annabeth hated it, because it sounded a lot like a closed door, like something she couldn't outthink or outplan or fight her way around.

Forever meant absence that would never change its mind.

She swallowed, and the deck of the Argo II was quiet beneath her. The sea stretched endlessly beyond the railing, dark water, dark sky and a world painted in shades of blue and silver.

Most of the ship slept, or tried to. The events of the day still felt unreal enough that sleep seemed impossible, so Annabeth drew her knees closer to her chest and stared out toward the horizon.

Her fingers curled around the sleeve of her jacket, and the fabric still smelled faintly of salt. 

And Percy.

The scent itself wasn't remarkable. Sea water, salt. Something clean and familiar and distinctly him. If she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine she was standing on the beach at Camp Half-Blood again, Percy beside her, the ocean rolling endlessly beyond them.

Normal and ordinary, and the sort of memory that should never have felt precious, but it did.

Because Percy had always been precious in ways she rarely allowed herself to examine.

Annabeth had spent years convincing herself she was practical, reasonable and smart enough not to build her life around things that could disappear, and somehow Percy Jackson had slipped through every defense she possessed. Not all at once, but slowly and steadily and throughout time, the way roots cracked stone and tides reshaped coastlines.

The way certain stars became part of navigation before anyone realized they were using them, Percy had simply remained.

At first he had been an irritation, she would have to admit — a walking headache with which she had to learn how to be, with far too little luck and way too much confidence in improvisation and the power of recklessness. Then, he was a companion. Then a friend.

Then something so deeply woven into her understanding of the world that separating him from it felt impossible.

When she thought of camp, she thought of Percy. When she thought of quests, she thought of Percy. When she imagined the future — however reluctantly, however vaguely — Percy was there too, and she didn’t consciously placed him there.

He simply belonged, as naturally as the sea belonged to the horizon. As naturally as breathing, as naturally as gravity.

Percy was never related to absence.

Until he was.

Until he was ripped out of her hands and her sight and her knowing. Until he was gone and no one, human or immortal or undead or divine, knew a thing about it.

Even the memory of it hit her bones with such force that Annabeth's chest tightened. Before last year, she had never truly considered the possibility — never as something serious, not as something real, because of course, Percy left sometimes — of him being anywhere near the absence she knew so well.

Sure, quests happened and sometimes things went awry (like someone having to hold the sky or someone being taken to the Underworld or gods know where, or them getting separated), and summers ended and there were days and weeks when they weren't together, but those were temporary things.

Predictable things.

That was the kind of distance that came with an eventual return, because Percy had always come back. There was no reason not to, after all. Always, even when the odds were impossible and when every logical calculation suggested otherwise.

Percy came back, and that was a fact.

Looking back, that had been her mistake. For some illogical, terrible, naive reason, she had begun believing it was a law of nature. Something fixed and permanent, like sunrise and the tides and the stars.

And then a goddess had stolen him, just like that. One day he existed, and the next day he didn't — there wasn’t a warning, an explanation, a note or a trace; there was only emptiness.

And suddenly Percy Jackson had become absence too.

Finding that out had nearly destroyed her, because losing Percy hurt more than losing anyone else — while she had prepared herself for that grief before the Battle of Manhattan, he hadn’t died. He had stayed, again, almost out of spite, and it was a relief so big that she forgot the fear.

It hurt more than losing anyone else, and she had never been brave enough to measure grief that way. It had shattered her because Percy had occupied a place inside her life that nobody else ever had.

Luke had taught her how devastating loss could be, and Thalia had taught her how complicated reunion could become, but Percy had taught her what constancy felt like. What certainty felt like. And when certainty disappeared, the world tilted; nothing stayed where it belonged anymore.

The months after his disappearance had felt wrong in a way she struggled to describe, as though somebody had removed a pillar from a building and expected the structure to continue standing, as if a familiar constellation had vanished from the sky and the ocean itself had forgotten how to reach the shore.

Everything had continued — the sun still rose, camp still functioned and quests still happened. She still woke every morning, after all, but something fundamental had gone missing.

A piece of reality.

A piece of herself.

It was difficult to explain. The grief itself had been familiar, because Annabeth knew grief. She knew fear. She knew loss so intimately that sometimes she wondered whether it recognized her on sight or would have to introduce itself when it inevitably came to shake her hand.

But this had been different. Percy's disappearance had not felt like someone leaving as much as it had felt like someone reaching into the foundations of her life and removing a support beam. Sure, the structure remained standing, but every day afterward had carried the terrible certainty that something was wrong and something essential had been misplaced.

Percy had never belonged among the missing. Percy was supposed to be there.

He was supposed to be standing beside her when she rolled her eyes at somebody's stupid plans, but the world had continued existing while Percy didn't, and people had expected her to keep moving. She was expected to keep talking, eating, sleeping, thinking, as if losing him was merely another tragedy in a life already crowded with them.

  They acted careful around them anyway, because they weren’t insane not to, but everyone still expected her to behave as if she had not spent years building parts of herself around his existence and he had not become woven through her life so thoroughly that removing him felt like tearing threads from a tapestry and pretending the picture remained unchanged.

The ship was quiet, at that point in the night.

Most of the crew had retired hours ago, exhaustion finally winning over adrenaline and celebration — of finding their missing camper and finding new allies to the chaos — and relief. The only sounds came from the occasional footsteps overhead, those assigned to watch for threats in the darkness beyond the ship.

The sea murmured below, and wood creaked softly. The world slept, but Annabeth didn’t.

She paced around the small cabin over and over and over again, restless still like she had been for months now. 

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

The cabin wasn't large enough for the amount of restless energy trapped beneath her skin. She crossed from one wall to the other, turned and walked back. She turned again and walked and turned around and walked more — those months of searching had taught her how to keep moving. How to keep looking and how to function while carrying fear.

Apparently, nobody had informed her body that the search was over.

The moonlight spilled through the porthole, painting silver across the floorboards. The Moon had become her most loyal companion over the past months of sleepless nights and spent staring at ceilings. Months spent imagining impossible scenarios and impossible endings, and spent searching so much that worry became habit, eventually.

Fear became routine, and Annabeth learned how to carry it over all of the layers of nightmares and trauma and loss.

Percy was back. The objective fact existed, and she knew it. She had seen him, touched him and held him, and yet her mind still behaved like a hunted thing. Her brain still expected disaster around every corner and her nerves were still braced for loss.

Night after night she had sat awake beneath the moonlight, thinking, planning and worrying. Praying, occasionally, though she'd never admit it aloud.

Tonight should have been different.

Tonight Percy was alive.

Tonight Percy was there.

If only her heart could believe her senses.

It was suddenly that the door of the cabin opened, silently enough that most people might not have noticed it at all were they in similar turmoil.

“Wise Girl?” the shadows called, and the familiar voice stopped her immediately. Annabeth snapped her head in his direction, watching as Percy — Percy, Percy, Percy — entered the room and stood just a couple of steps away from the closed door. “Hey,” he greeted.

Percy stood there.

Percy.

The sight of him still hit her strangely, as if her brain required a moment to process what her eyes were seeing. Blond hair, blue eyes and faint crease between his brows when he was worried.

Alive.

He stepped inside and shut the door quietly behind him.

“Hey,” he said, turning his head towards her again.

She was more than a little out of breath.

“Hi,” she greeted back, her brain running overtime and overdrive to encapsulate his presence.

Brilliant response, her mind supplied, and nothing else. She stared, because apparently that was all she knew how to do anymore — stare at him and reassure herself that he was still there.

Percy's expression softened at the sight of her — and oh, she could die — and the corners of his mouth twitched upward.

Annabeth swallowed nothing, for her mouth had been a little dry ever since she had seen him in that roman attire, and she scrambled for anything to say.

“I—uh,” she babbled. Excellent. Very eloquent.

Percy arched a curious eyebrow.

 “I’m sorry,” Annabeth decided to say. “About the judo flip,” she clarified.

She was. She really was sorry — she knew it hand’t offended Percy in any way, if his smile at the time was any indicator whatsoever, but she wished she had just tackled him to the ground with a hug and stood there. For hours, preferably; forever, ideally.

For half a second after she spoke, though, Percy simply blinked. And, for some reason, then he looked genuinely offended.

“Are you kidding me?”

Annabeth felt herself shrug at his question, lowering her eyes from his for a moment.

“I mean it,” she promised.

Percy blinked again.

“Wise Girl,” he said, a little breathless and a little revolted, but lightweight.

“I launched you into the ground,” she explained, as if it was any good explanation.

It was his turn to shrug, nonchalant.

“You were happy.”

She pressed her lips together, and lowered her head.

“I could've hugged you.”

Percy's grin widened, and something a little wicked flickered inside his eyes.

“I'll take you on top of me anytime."

Annabeth made a strangled sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a groan.

“Percy.”

"What?" he asked, entirely unrepentant and pleased with himself.

Completely pleased, even, like making her cheeks heat up so easily after six months apart was some tremendous personal achievement.

Which, unfortunately, it probably was, and for a moment the tension eased a little, and her shoulders loosened. The moment of her muscles were small, but more than enough for Percy to notice.

That much — and him — hadn’t changed.

His smile faded gently, and his eyes followed her as she resumed pacing, restless and wild and a bit too out of her senses. Annabeth didn't even realize she was doing it until she caught him watching.

Concern had settled across his face now, the type that came from knowing somebody too well.

“Beth?”

She halted at once. The name caught her off guard so completely that she almost stumbled.

Percy noticed that too.

“Beth,” he repeated softly, taking a step closer. “What's going on?”

He didn’t usually call her that. He didn’t usually call her anything other than “Wise Girl” whenever there was a chance someone could be around — on quests or at camp when there was daylight. He called her “Annabeth” when talking about her to other people, and nothing else when there were ears and a soul around.

But Percy was a loving, very much in love, very much cliché man (that wasn’t a complaint whatsoever), and Annabeth was the person he loved the most. Inevitably, and she knew that when they first started dating, he would get around to pet names.

The surprising part was just how much she loved each and all of them.

He called her whatever sweet thing came to mind, whenever it came to mind. Love (she melted every time) and dear, and darling, and sweetheart (she had a soft spot for that one in particular), and ever more stupid things such as “curls” or “owl” or “pretty” just because he liked to say it.

Beth, however, was rare. It was something she didn’t hear often, and he didn’t use it often either. Anything related to her actual name was something they didn’t use — it wasn’t like she didn’t like her name, but it was what everybody else called her. That, and the fact that once, Thalia called her “Beth” for some reason at random, and Annabeth told her not to call her that.

Percy had heard it, and took it as an order, too. Percy, being Percy, had apparently interpreted that as a sacred commandment.

And obeyed it ever since.

That was one of the strange things about him.

People often mistook Percy for careless instead of a reckless person (he could argue with the wall about that; it was clear as day). They saw the jokes, the impulsiveness, the way he threw himself into danger first and worried about consequences later. They saw someone who forgot homework assignments and directions and occasionally his own train of thought.

What they failed to notice was that Percy remembered everything that he considered to hold importance for anyone he knew. He remembered every preference, every fear and every offhand comment she made and forgot five minutes later.

He remembered how she took her coffee even if she changed it every month. He remembered that she hated when people touched her sketchbooks without asking, and how anyone should stay away from her hair (except for him and Grover, because she liked the caresses). He remembered exactly which constellation she had pointed out to him years ago during a quest and which myth she had attached to it.

He remembered things she had never expected anyone to notice, and when Annabeth told someone not to call her Beth, Percy had quietly accepted it as law. Not exactly because he was afraid of upsetting her or because he thought she would be angry, but just because she had said she didn't like it.

And that was enough.

Sometimes she thought love lived in moments like that. Not in grand sacrifices, and definitely not prophecies or in battles, but in those small, almost invisible decisions people made every day to accommodate one another's hearts.

Percy had always been full of those decisions.

Which was why she remembered so clearly the first time he had broken that particular rule.

He first used Beth when they were lying together in his bed, on Cabin Three — in broad daylight, a lazy weekday Chiron had granted them when he looked at the pair and decided they looked a little too much like they had been visiting Hades often and not seen daylight in at least a year. There was not a problem with her being in the Cabin, mostly (Poseidon didn’t care at all, and Percy had asked about his friends being there), and Chiron was a little hesitant to be too harsh on them ever since Luke had killed himself with her dagger right in front of whoever had eyes to see.

And ever since Percy, the Hero of Olympus, hadn’t died, and had not known what to do after he hadn’t died at the blooming age of sixteen.

There was a strange kind of exhaustion that followed survival, and it angered her that nobody talked about it. The stories she heard and learned always ended after the victory when the monster was defeated and the world was saved and all the living heroes celebrated.

Nobody ever mentioned the morning after, or the week after, or the months spent learning how to live inside a future that had almost never happened.

Percy had carried that uncertainty like an extra shadow. He had survived, yes — and thank fuck —, but then he had looked around and realized there was no next instruction.

Annabeth thought that that had frightened him more than most monsters ever had. 

They did take advantage of Chiron’s pity as much as they could, because, as it turned out, Annabeth loved being held (by Percy) as much as Percy loved having her (especifically) in his arms.

She didn’t know what they had talked about before, but they had been quiet for a while; she had plastered to his side and had a leg thrown over his own, while his arms held her close and he was very much on the verge of counsciosuness — mostly out of it.

Hearing and feeling his breathing was soothing, after all they had been through. It was calming, and at the time, it had been the only thing to still her mind and heart enough so she could rest.

The cabin had been warm from the summer sun. Life outside continued, and for once, neither of them was required to save it.

It had felt miraculous.

“Beth,” he had called, drowsy with a bone-deep tiredness that was allowed to be present, that day. She hummed in acknowledgement of his calling, and she hadn’t really thought about what she had called her — her name, and everything related to her, was so sweet and so cared for in her voice, that she didn’t even hear anything other than that.

“Hm?” she hummed, tilting her head upwards just a bit to look up and find the side of his face. His eyes had remained closed, and his fingers had traced idle patterns against her shoulder.

“Thank you,” he said, and she frowned softly, huffing a breath from her nose.

“What for?” she asked.

A smile bloomed on his face.

“Tolerating me,” he said, and there wasn’t anything else but gratitude in his voice. “All these years.”

She had stared at him then, a little too stunned to speak, and found there wasn't a trace of teasing there, as though he genuinely believed she had done him some tremendous kindness by staying.

She decided it wasn’t worth arguing over how she didn’t “tolerate” him at any moment. For all that was worth, Annabeth had loved him, one way or another, from the very start — he wasn’t a quest to be put behind or a problem to solve; he was the reason why reason made sense, and the solution to the chaos in her mind and, apparently, in the world.

They did have that discussion later. It did earn her kisses and smiles Annabeth wished she could have had painted and hanging on walls just so she didn’t risk forgetting a thing about his face or his touch or his love over her skin.

And standing now in the cabin of the Argo II, she found herself remembering every single one of them.

The problem with six months apart, she thought, was that memory became dangerous when it wasn’t absent like he had been. At first it helped, really; it sustained her sanity and the certainty that Percy wasn’t a made up thing her mind manipulated into her memory when loneliness took over her head.

She remembered a laugh and survived another day, then remembered a smile and survived another week. Utimately, she remembered the feeling of his arms around her and convinced herself that one more month would not kill her even if it felt like it would.

Eventually, memory started becoming cruel, because no recollection was ever as good as the real thing. There wasn’t a dream that ever felt enough or amount of remembering that could replace presence, and now Percy was standing right there.

Close enough to touch, close enough that she could see the concern growing in his expression. close enough that she could hear his breathing over the distant creaking of the ship and close enough that all the fear she had been carrying for months suddenly had somewhere to go.

Which was perhaps the problem. For months she had been forced to carry it alone, and she wasn’t sure when she would be able — if at all — to share with someone she knew would willingly share the burden with her. And now Percy was there, and now Percy could see it.

Annabeth didn't know what to do with that.

“Hey,” he called again when she hadn’t answered for the better part of a minute. Annabeth’s eyes snapped back towards him. “What’s going on, love?” Percy asked once more, and she didn’t know what to do with what was in her chest.

Love, he had called her, and the pet name should not have affected her the way it did. It was the thousanth time she had heard it, perhaps, but Percy never seemed to understand the effect he had on people. Or maybe — unlikely, but he did have the talent to surprise her — he did, and simply chose to weaponize it whenever possible.

The concern in his voice made it worse, the gentleness and care and the way he wasn't pushing her. The way he was waiting, like she had been for months to even hear his voice; as though she was something precious and breakable.

Gods— no. She wouldn’t call for them. They didn’t deserve to be even remembered, at that point; some more than others, she wanted them to rot wherever Kronos had been for however long it’s been since he was chopped into nasty pieces of tyranny. She wouldn’t call for them, not after everything. Not after Hera (or Juno or whatever the fuck her name was), and not after six months of more unanswered prayers.

She wouldn’t risk calling for any of them after searching every corner of the country for a boy who had been stolen because immortals had decided that was acceptable collateral damage, after waking up every morning wondering if Percy was alive, after falling asleep every night wondering if he was scared.

Not after imagining him alone, lost and gone for months.

But, damn, was she tired of feeling those things. The fear and grief and the pretending that she wasn’t angry. She was tired of carrying around an absence so large it had nearly swallowed her whole.

The words left before she could stop them.

“You left,” she said. “That’s what’s going on.”